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Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time

newscientist.com

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Re: Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time

#71

Post by somenameforme »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #33
sebastiennight wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're fighting for their country's existence. I would use every weapon in my disposal; and I'm a pacifist who hates violence. I'm not sure it's accurate to define yourself as a pacifist if you believe safeguarding the concept of a nation-state is more important than human life, ethics, or the downstream effects of using "every weapon at your disposal". I don't think you realize the creativity and variety we human…

>> I'm not sure it's accurate to define yourself as a pacifist if you believe safeguarding the concept of a nation-state is more important than human life, ethics, or the downstream effects of using "every weapon at your disposal". Wait till you hear that I'm also an anti-nationalist :P But I'm also pragmatic. Nations aren't going away and they have armies and they like to invade each other. If my country were to be…

But don't you think Greece, if nothing else, emphasizes that a country isn't defined by whoever happens to declare it as part of their borders, but the people within those borders? Greece persisted for millennia, even when there was no Greece. The state disappeared but the people persisted.

I'm not at all a pacifist but there is no country I would fight, let alone die, for. Because when we say that we're really speaking of fighting and dying for politicians, not a country. And there is no political group that, in my opinion, deserves anywhere near that level of loyalty.

Re: Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time

#72

Post by asdff »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #47
readthenotes1 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't it just flying to a particular GPS, coordinate and exploding? That's quite a bit different than flying to an area and killing anything that moves...

It depends on the system. Some modern systems can react to high-value targets of opportunity, hunt for targets, or switch to a new target if the one they are after is destroyed before they get there. There are different variants of the weapons to deal with different use cases. The 1990s versions were relatively limited though. Target selection is much more networked, automated, and adaptive than it used to be. Missil…

I would hope it is. The fact it is even possible for a friendly system to lock onto another friendly system and fire upon it seems like a pretty big damn issue to engineer around. I guess they still haven't though considering kuwait shot down an f15 a couple months ago. You'd think lockheed or raytheon would have figured something clever out to solve this half a century ago.

Re: Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time

#73

Post by trhway »

philipkglass wrote: post #59
kylehotchkiss wrote: post #55

What's gonna happen when the redneck militias start building these on their compounds? I'm terrified of domestic implications - police departments can't go buy old military gear to squash these yet.

The early Ukraine war FPV drones were armed with warheads from lightweight anti-tank weapons, like the RPG-7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPG-7#Ammunition The newer drones may have dedicated warhead designs now, but the concept is similar. They carry high explosive warheads that aren't sold to civilians. It's the same reason the militias don't already have anti-tank weapons.

You can watch on YouTube people playing with 30mm diameter shaped charges (piercing thick metal plates). The anti-tank warhead is the same shaped charge of 90-130mm diameter.

Re: Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time

#74

Post by somenameforme »

john_strinlai wrote: post #64
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I'm not sure it's accurate to define yourself as a pacifist if you believe safeguarding the concept of a nation-state is more important than human life, ethics, or the downstream effects of using "every weapon at your disposal". Wait till you hear that I'm also an anti-nationalist :P But I'm also pragmatic. Nations aren't going away and they have armies and they like to invade each other. If my country were to be…

> I think I do but why do you say this? I didn't understand how it connects to the rest of your comment, or to mine. not the parent, but i have a guess. they mention the variety of weapons because some weapons are abhorrent. designed to be maximally painful, for the maximum amount of time, purely to bring about maximum suffering. "every weapon at your disposal" includes those weapons. and that is really difficult to…

Using every weapon at your disposal would entail, at the extreme end, unleashing weapons which could viably kill every person on this planet - to defend a state. It's not exactly a typical foundation for pacifism.

Re: Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time

#75

Post by janalsncm »

throwaway_19sz wrote: post #66

Can someone who got past the paywall tell me what the definition of “fully autonomous” is here? I’m guessing it means the software selected targets based on something the human operators decided when they launched the drone? Is the criteria geographic (any humans in a certain zone), or known individuals (facial recognition), or based on enemy uniforms/visual descriptions, or a specific behavioural rule (anyone emergi…

It flies to a defined kill zone and targets everything there.

> The test took place two years ago and involved quadcopter drones that were programmed to fly towards the front line, cover between 3 and 5 kilometres over around 10 minutes and then engage “Terminator mode”, in which an AI model searches for and intercepts targets.

> “We just launch it and we know everything will be dead – everything that will be found there in this particular area will be dead,” says Kokhanovskyy. “There is no connection to the drone at all, you cannot see the video, nothing… Everything it sees will be killed.”

Re: Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time

#76

Post by arjie »

Something like a proximity mine from a video game. I always did wonder why they didn't just sprinkle a bunch of these in an intermediary zone. Surely it provides incredibly effective area denial. Perhaps it does and you can't get in, perhaps it invites escalation. Definitely seems like widespread automated hunter-seekers will be some kind of terror operation in the next quarter century. Too easy to build, too easy to deploy, and you don't even have to be around when it activates. Controlling the explosives pipeline is surely the only way. I'm surprised it hasn't already happened.

Re: Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time

#77

Post by trhway »

ReptileMan wrote: post #49

Fully autonomous Ukrainian drones. We don't know if Russia hadn't used something before them. The two sides are quite evenly matched

I don't think it is about technology - a camera module with NPU running YOLO can be had for like $30 from AliExpress. And a lot of other technological weapons is possible on a cheap, yet nor Russia, nor Ukraine are doing it.

In case of autonomous drones i don't see them bringing any noticeable benefit over FPV until they are deployed in the numbers an order or two of magnitude larger. Both countries seem yet to reach such number of drones. And the large task here isn't just mere production of the drones, it is the whole system of delivery/deployment/management of those large hives of autonomous drones which also needs to be developed/implemented.

Re: Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time

#78

Post by nickff »

asdff wrote: post #72
jandrewrogers wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on the system. Some modern systems can react to high-value targets of opportunity, hunt for targets, or switch to a new target if the one they are after is destroyed before they get there. There are different variants of the weapons to deal with different use cases. The 1990s versions were relatively limited though. Target selection is much more networked, automated, and adaptive than it used to be. Missil…

I would hope it is. The fact it is even possible for a friendly system to lock onto another friendly system and fire upon it seems like a pretty big damn issue to engineer around. I guess they still haven't though considering kuwait shot down an f15 a couple months ago. You'd think lockheed or raytheon would have figured something clever out to solve this half a century ago.

This is a solved problem, and IFF was invented in the 1930s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identification_friend_or_foe

It is believed that the Kuwaiti aircraft did not have its IFF transponder turned on (IFF is and has always been standard equipment on the F-18).

Re: Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time

#79

Post by holoduke »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #21

A few thoughts. First, I advise a modicum of skepticism to be retained in the face of such news. Ukraine is, after all, in the middle of an existential crisis and must take every advantage it can, even if it's just scaring Russian invaders further (I bet both Russian and Ukrainian soldiers are already pretty scared of drones). Additionally: "“There is no connection to the drone at all, you cannot see the video, nothi…

You are misinformed. Ukraine is used as cannon fodder by western institutions. You talk about Ukraine taking decisions. I can tell you that the normal Joe in Ukraine is completely sidelined in decisions. The whole country is controlled by foreign powers. A lot of western people call this Russian propoganda. They can't see that their own governments are at the wrong side of history. In the meantime it's hypocritical behavior is visible all over the world.

Re: Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time

#80

Post by holoduke »

inigyou wrote: post #39
sebastiennight wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're fighting for their country's existence. I would use every weapon in my disposal; and I'm a pacifist who hates violence. I'm not sure it's accurate to define yourself as a pacifist if you believe safeguarding the concept of a nation-state is more important than human life, ethics, or the downstream effects of using "every weapon at your disposal". I don't think you realize the creativity and variety we human…

They're fighting for their own existence. Russia has killed, enslaved, and/or tortured most of the citizens of the regions it's already captured, and replaced them with ethnic Russians.

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